By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum puts the blame firmly in the lap of Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) for the Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao mega fight not having taken place by now. It’s interesting how Arum doesn’t take any responsibility for the problems that have taken place in the negotiations in the past, and instead puts it on Mayweather for them not having fought.
There was no mention of the stadium that Arum wanted to be built in the past before the fight could take place or the troubles Mayweather had in trying to get Pacquiao to agree to the full random blood testing that he wanted during their first attempt to negotiate a fight.
Arum thinks Mayweather is afraid to fight Pacquiao because he’s a southpaw, and that Mayweather’s style doesn’t work as well against southpaws than it does against right-handed fighters.
“Don’t you understand why the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight won’t and can’t happen?” Arum said to ESPN. “I promoted Mayweather for over 10 years. One thing I learned over those years is that Mayweather doesn’t like or won’t fight southpaws. Why? Because his whole style is geared for a right-handed fighter. And to compound that if the southpaw is really fast and moves, that would give Mayweather and his style a lot of problems, and it would really jeopardize Mayweather’s record of an undefeated fighter. That’s why the fight isn’t happening. Because this is almost like before the 2nd World war. Hitler wanted this and wanted that, and if we gave him this peace would occur. But it was never enough, because Hitler’s dream was to go to war and conquer all of the world. Now Mayweather’s dream is to stay undefeated; so whatever you give him, if Manny agreed to fight for nothing, it wouldn’t be enough. Don’t you understand that?”
The mention of Hitler by Arum was a little out into left field, wasn’t it?
Where Arum mentions it as being “never enough”, it tells me that Arum isn’t patient enough to negotiate with Mayweather. When I see a negotiator talking the way that Arum is talking, it tells me that this person is too used to getting his own way, and isn’t able to deal with a fighter who has bargaining power that Mayweather has. I get the impression that Arum has become too accustomed to having the upper hand in Pacquiao’s negotiations with fighters from Arum’s Top Rank stable. When you get used to dealing with your own Top Rank stable fighters, of course it’s going to be a huge shock when you’re not dealing with a fighter that’s not within your stable like Mayweather. What I see from Arum is a promoter who needs to work more with other promoters to get used to the give and take of normal negotiations rather than setting up in house fights between Top Rank fighters that he’s matching against each other. Arum needs to break free from the club-like negotiating and realize that this is the way it is when you’re not dealing with someone from your own Top Rank stable.
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